J. R. R. Tolkien derived the characters, stories, places, and languages of Middle-earth from many sources. Among these are the Celtic legends and languages, which for Tolkien were principally Irish and Welsh. He gave multiple conflicting reasons for his liking for Welsh. Tolkien stated directly that he had made use of Welsh phonology and grammar for his constructed Elvish language Sindarin. Scholars have identified multiple legends, both Irish and Welsh, as likely sources of some of Tolkien's stories and characters; thus for example the Noldorin Elves resemble the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann, while the tale of Beren and Lúthien parallels that of the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen . Tolkien chose Celtic names for the isolated settlement of Bree-land, to distinguish it from the Shire with its English names.
Tolkien denied that he had been influenced by the Celtic Arthurian legends, but scholars have likened several of his characters to Arthurian figures, including Gandalf with Merlin and Galadriel with the Lady of the Lake. Further, there are close parallels between the hero Aragorn with his magical sword Andúril and King Arthur and his sword Excalibur.
Interpreters of Tolkien's Middle-earth, including the film-maker Peter Jackson who made the 2001–2003 The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the composer Howard Shore who created the music for the films, have chosen to portray the Elves using an otherworldly and ethereal modern conception of the Celtic, of the kind mocked by Tolkien.
Tolkien's relationship with the Celtic languages is somewhat complex, as he professed to like Welsh but to dislike Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. [10] He gave several conflicting explanations of why he liked Welsh, and his other favourite languages so much. [10]
One of his statements, made while discussing his invented languages, was simply that liking the sound of a language was a matter of personal taste. Further, he said that he liked Welsh because had a "fondness for nasal consonants, especially the much favoured n", along with the frequent "word-patterns ... made with the soft and less sonorous w and the voiced spirants f and dd contrasted with the nasals." [10] [T 1]
In his essay "English and Welsh", delivered as a lecture in 1955, he wrote that the "basic pleasure" lay "in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings." [10] [T 2] That pleasure was complex, involving phonetics, style, and association with meaning all at once. [10]
There was a more specific phonaesthetic pleasure which Tolkien was ashamed to mention, [T 1] but which influenced his choice of names in Middle-earth. Tolkien believed that the sound of a language somehow conveyed meaning, and in some cases pleasure, even to people who did not know the language: to anyone who heard the sound of, for example, Welsh words. The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey described that belief as Tolkien's "linguistic heresy", adding that while linguists of his time were largely opposed to it (holding that the association of sound and meaning is wholly arbitrary), evidence has emerged which supports it. [11]
Tolkien gave yet another explanation, namely that Welsh was uniquely attractive to people native to Britain. He wrote that "It is the native language to which in unexplored desire we would still go home". He meant that since Welsh was the language of Britain before the English language arrived, there was a powerful but dormant liking for Welsh among speakers of English: land and language went together. At the same time, Tolkien stated explicitly that he was English, from Worcestershire, a county in what was once the Kingdom of Mercia, and professed a love for its (Germanic) language. Fimi comments that Tolkien was arguing that "history and ancestry or a sense of 'home' and belonging are the main reasons behind personal linguistic tastes." She writes that in that case, Tolkien's Worcestershire roots had put him in touch with Middle and Old English as well as Welsh, and presumably (since the Romans too had occupied the area) also Latin. [10]
Welsh i-affection | Sindarin |
---|---|
gair/geiriau (word/words) | galadh/gelaidh (tree/trees) |
Tolkien based the phonology and some of the grammar of his constructed Elvish language Sindarin on Literary Welsh. [5] [6] This began as what Tolkien called Goldogrin or "Gnomish", for which he wrote a substantial dictionary and a grammar. [T 3] [12] Tolkien worked not only to construct individual languages, but to develop the systematic patterns of changes from a language to its descendants, forming families of Elvish languages. In Tolkien's words, "The changes worked on Sindarin [from Common Eldarin] very closely (and deliberately) resemble those which produced the modern and medieval Welsh from ancient Celtic, so that in the result Sindarin has a marked Welsh style, and the relations between it and [the supposedly ancestral language] Quenya closely resemble those between Welsh and Latin." [T 4] Nelson Goering analysed this claim, finding it broadly reasonable, if the relationships are allowed to be of different kinds. [13]
Elvish language | Features | Resemblances | European language |
---|---|---|---|
Quenya "snake", a name leuka, Makalaure | High language, "Elven-Latin" 1) "Used for ceremony, and for high matters of lore and song" 2) Spelling system is Latin-like | Cultural parallels of Quenya and Latin: ancient language, now in learned use | Latin "fountain", "state" fontana, civitat |
Sindarin changed more than Quenya from ancient Eldarin lŷg, Maglor | Colloquial language 1) Initial consonant mutations 2) General phonological structure 3) i-mutation (i-umlaut) to form noun plurals | Linguistic parallels of Sindarin and Welsh: Sindarin was designed "to resemble Welsh phonologically" | Welsh borrowed and adapted words from Latin ffynnon, ciwdod |
Tolkien further stated that he had given Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh ... because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers", i.e. that he envisaged a "fit" between the language, the character of his Sindarin Elves, and the people in Celtic legends. [T 5]
Matthew T. Dickerson, in the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , writes that Rivendell consistently represents a sanctuary, a place that felt like home, throughout the legendarium. [14] The journalist Jane Ciabattari writes that a major reason for the popularity of Lord of the Rings was the desire for escape among the Vietnam War generation. She compares the military-industrial complex with Mordor, and suggests that they yearned for a place of peace, just as Frodo Baggins felt an "overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace… in Rivendell". [15] The medievalist Marjorie Burns writes that Rivendell and the other Elvish realm of Lothlórien parallel the Celtic Otherworld (in Irish, Tír na nÓg) in being hard to find, but if one is admitted and welcomed, one crosses a river, symbolising the spiritual transition from the ordinary realm, and "the weary adventurer is transported into a haven of Elven hospitality and delight". [2] There are multiple markers of the transition:
To enter Rivendell is to leave, for a time, the uplands' bleak, mountainous, northerly terrain. First comes the steep descent ...; pines are replaced by beech and oak; the air grows warmer; the first of the elves greet them with laughter and song, and then comes the inevitable water crossing that divides the rest of Middle-earth from the inner core of every Elven realm. [16]
Burns notes that both "Riven" and "dell" suggest a low place into which one must descend; and that a descent is characteristic of Celtic tales of entry into the underground realm of the Tuatha Dé Danann, whose chiefs each rule a burial mound. [17]
The exile of the Noldor Elves in The Silmarillion has parallels with the story of the Tuatha Dé Danann. [1] These semi-divine beings invaded Ireland from across the sea, burning their ships when they arrived and fighting a fierce battle with the current inhabitants. The Noldor arrived in Middle-earth from Valinor and burned their ships, then turned to fight the Dark Lord Melkor. [7]
The loss of a hand by Maedhros, son of Fëanor, parallels the similar mutilation suffered by Nuada Airgetlám (king of the Tuatha Dé Danann) ("Silver Hand/Arm") during the battle with the Firbolg. [7] [20] Nuada received a hand made of silver to replace the lost one, and his later appellation has the same meaning as the Elvish name Celebrimbor : "silver fist" or "Hand of silver" in Sindarin (Telperinquar in Quenya). [T 6] [8] Tolkien's professional work at the Temple of Nodens, Nuada's precursor, with its associations with a hero, Elves, a ring, and Dwarves, may have been a major stimulus in his creation of his Middle-earth mythology. [18] [19]
The scholar of English literature Paul H. Kocher writes that the Undying Lands of the Uttermost West, including Eldamar and Valinor, are "so far outside our experience that Tolkien can only ask us to take it completely on faith." [3] Kocher comments that these lands have an integral place both geographically and spiritually in Middle-earth, and that their closest literary equivalents are in the imrama Celtic tales from the early Middle Ages. The imrama tales describe how Irish adventurers such as Saint Brendan sailed the seas looking for the "Land of Promise". He notes that it is certain that Tolkien knew these stories, since in 1955 he wrote a poem, entitled Imram, about Brendan's voyage. [3] [4]
Balor of the Evil Eye in Irish mythology has been named as a possible source for the Eye of Sauron. Balor's evil eye, in the middle of his forehead, was able to overcome a whole army. He was king of the evil Fomoire, who like Sauron were evil spirits in hideously ugly bodies. Mordor has been compared to "a Celtic hell" where Balor "ruled the dead from a tower of glass", just as the Undying Lands of Aman resemble the Celtic Earthly Paradise of Tír na nÓg in the furthest (Atlantic) West. [21]
Scholars have stated that Tolkien chose the placenames of Bree-land carefully, incorporating Celtic elements into the names to indicate that Bree was older than the Shire, whose placenames are English with Old English elements. The name "Bree" means "hill", and the hill beside the village is named "Bree-hill". The name of the village of Brill, in Buckinghamshire, which Tolkien visited when he was at the University of Oxford and which inspired him to create Bree, [T 7] is constructed exactly the same way: Brill is a modern contraction of Breʒ-hyll. Both syllables are words for the same thing, "hill" – the first is Brythonic (Celtic) and the second Old English. [22] Shippey writes that the name's construction, "hill-hill", is "therefore in a way nonsense, exactly parallel with Chetwode (or 'wood-wood') in Berkshire close by." [23] The first element "Chet" in "Chetwode" derives from the Brythonic ced, meaning "wood". [24] Shippey notes further that Tolkien stated [T 8] that he had selected Bree-land placenames – Archet, Bree, Chetwood, and Combe – because they "contained non-English elements", which would make them "sound 'queer', to imitate 'a style that we should perhaps vaguely feel to be “Celtic”'." [25] Shippey comments that this was part of Tolkien's "linguistic heresy", his theory that the sound of words conveyed both meaning and beauty. [25] The philologist Christopher Robinson writes that Tolkien chose a name to "fit not only its designee, but also the phonological and morphological style of the nomenclature to which it belongs, as well as the linguistic scheme of his invented world." [26] In Robinson's view, Tolkien intentionally selected "Celtic elements that have survived in the place names of England" – like bree and chet – to mark them as older than the Shire placenames which embody "a hint of the past" with their English and Old English elements. All of this indicates the "remarkable care and sophistication" with which Tolkien constructed the "feigned history and translation from Westron personal and placenames". [26]
Authors such as Shippey, Donald O'Brien, Patrick Wynne, and Carl Hostetter have pointed out similarities between the tale of Beren and Lúthien in the Silmarillion, and Culhwch and Olwen , a tale in the Welsh Mabinogion . In both, the male heroes make rash promises after having been stricken by the beauty of non-mortal maidens; both enlist the aid of great kings, Arthur and Finrod; both show rings that prove their identities; and both are set impossible tasks that include, directly or indirectly, the hunting and killing of ferocious beasts (the wild boars, Twrch Trwyth and Ysgithrywyn, and the wolf Carcharoth) with the help of a supernatural hound (Cafall and Huan). Both maidens possess such beauty that flowers grow beneath their feet when they come to meet the heroes for the first time, as if they were living embodiments of spring. [27]
The Mabinogion was part of the Red Book of Hergest , a source of Welsh Celtic lore, which the Red Book of Westmarch , a supposed source of Hobbit-lore, probably imitates. [28]
The Arthurian legends are part of the Welsh cultural heritage. Tolkien denied their influence, but scholars have found multiple parallels. [29] [30] [31] [32] The Wizard Gandalf has been compared with Merlin, [33] Frodo and Aragorn with Arthur, [34] and Galadriel with the Lady of the Lake. [29] Flieger has investigated the correlations and Tolkien's creative methods. [35] She points out visible correspondences such as Avalon with Avallónë, and Brocéliande with Broceliand, the original name of Beleriand. [36] Tolkien himself said that Frodo's and Bilbo's departure to Tol Eressëa (also called "Avallon" in the Legendarium) was an "Arthurian ending". [36] [37] Such correlations are discussed in the posthumously published The Fall of Arthur ; a section, "The Connection to the Quenta", explores Tolkien's use of Arthurian material in The Silmarillion. [T 9] Another parallel is between the tale of Sir Balin and that of Túrin Turambar. Though Balin knows he wields an accursed sword, he continues his quest to regain King Arthur's favour. Fate catches up with him when he unwittingly kills his own brother, who mortally wounds him. Turin accidentally kills his friend Beleg with his sword. [38]
The sword | The Lord of the Rings | Arthurian legend |
---|---|---|
Is broken | At Elendil's death | When Arthur fights King Pellinore |
Delimits an era | Third Age begins as Isildur uses shards of Narsil to cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand; ends as Andúril helps to end Sauron's reign | King Arthur comes to power with Excalibur; Bedivere casts away the sword on Arthur's death |
Accompanies | Aragorn leading people of Gondor to victory | King Arthur leading people to victory |
Has a magical scabbard | Blade shall not be stained or broken | Wearer shall never lose blood |
Tolkien's use of swords with their own names, magical powers, ancient pedigrees, their own histories, and rituals of passage from one hero to the next, is in line with medieval and Arthurian legend. There are multiple parallels between Aragorn with his magical sword and Arthurian legend. The Sword in the Stone is broken, as Narsil is. Just as Excalibur delimits King Arthur's reign, so Narsil delimits the Third Age, beginning when Isildur cuts the Ring from Sauron's hand, and ending when the sword remade as Andúril helps to end Sauron's power and restore Aragorn as King. [39] Both Kings lead their peoples to victory. [40] The sword's magical scabbard, too, which the Elf-queen Galadriel gives to Aragorn as he leaves Lothlórien with the words "The blade that is drawn from this sheath shall not be stained or broken even in defeat", [T 10] parallels Excalibur's sheath, which guarantees that its wearer "shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded". [40] The elven scabbard describes the sword it was made for: [T 10] "It was overlaid with a tracery of flowers and leaves wrought of silver and gold, and on it were set in elven-runes formed of many gems the name Andúril and the lineage of the sword." [T 10]
In his 2001–2003 The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Peter Jackson chose to treat the first group of Elves seen by the Hobbit protagonists in the style of John Duncan's 1911 painting Riders of the Sidhe. The film was accompanied by music which similarly gave a "ethereal" [lower-alpha 1] modern Celtic feeling for the Elves. Together, these portrayed the Elves with an "otherworldly" tone, very unlike Tolkien's. [41] The composer responsible for the score, Howard Shore, creates what the folklorist and Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi calls the "same 'Celtic' feel'" in the music for the Elves in Rivendell. [lower-alpha 2] Shore had approached the Irish "folk-cum-New Age" singer Enya, whose music represents "Celticity as melancholy over a lost tradition." [41] For example, Enya's song "Lothlórien" on her album Shepherd Moons is an instrumental composition named for the Elvish realm of Lothlórien. [44] In Fimi's view, the "'Celtic' air and ambience" that Jackson uses for the Elves is reinforced by what the film's conceptual designer Alan Lee called "the use of natural forms ... [and] of flowing graceful lines" and "elements of Art Nouveau and Celtic design". [41] Fimi notes that both Tolkien and the historian Malcolm Chapman wrote "mocking[ly]" about the romantic stereotyping of Celts in this way. Tolkien spoke of "the wild incalculable poetic Celt, full of vague and misty imaginations"; [41] Chapman wrote of "high-flown metaphysical and moral conclusions drawn from 'Celtic' art by its admiring critics". [41]
The Tolkien scholar David Bratman "sharp[ly]" [46] criticized Shore's use of modern Celtic music for the Shire and its Hobbits. Bratman stated that the use of instruments like the bodhrán and Celtic harp was inappropriate, given that the Hobbits' homeland was inspired by the English Midlands where Tolkien lived. [47]
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power , a series about events in the Second Age of Middle-earth, has been criticized for its handling of race. [48] Commentators have observed that the Hobbit-like harfoots speak in Irish accents, behave as friendly peasants, and are accompanied by Celtic music; and that they resemble the 19th century caricaturist John Leech's "wildly unflattering" depictions of the Irish in Punch magazine. [45]
The English philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien created several constructed languages, mostly related to his fictional world of Middle-earth. Inventing languages, something that he called glossopoeia, was a lifelong occupation for Tolkien, starting in his teens.
Rivendell is a valley in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, representing both a homely place of sanctuary and a magical Elvish otherworld. It is an important location in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, being the place where the quest to destroy the One Ring began.
Arwen Undómiel is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. She appears in the novel The Lord of the Rings. Arwen is one of the half-elven who lived during the Third Age; her father was Elrond half-elven, lord of the Elvish sanctuary of Rivendell, while her mother was the Elf Celebrian, daughter of the Elf-queen Galadriel, ruler of Lothlórien. She marries the Man Aragorn, who becomes King of Arnor and Gondor.
Eärendil the Mariner and his wife Elwing are characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. They are depicted in The Silmarillion as Half-elven, the children of Men and Elves. He is a great seafarer who, on his brow, carried the Morning Star, a jewel called a Silmaril, across the sky. The jewel had been saved by Elwing from the destruction of the Havens of Sirion. The Morning Star and the Silmarils are elements of the symbolism of light, for divine creativity, continually splintered as history progresses. Tolkien took Eärendil's name from the Old English name Earendel, found in the poem Crist 1, which hailed him as "brightest of angels"; this was the beginning of Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology. Elwing is the granddaughter of Lúthien and Beren, and is descended from Melian the Maia, while Earendil is the son of Tuor and Idril. Through their progeny, Eärendil and Elwing became the ancestors of the Númenorean, and later Dúnedain, royal bloodline.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, Lothlórien or Lórien is the fairest realm of the Elves remaining in Middle-earth during the Third Age. It is ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn from their city of tree houses at Caras Galadhon. The wood-elves of the realm are called Galadhrim.
Elu Thingol or Elwë Singollo is a fictional character in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. He appears in The Silmarillion, The Lays of Beleriand and The Children of Húrin and in numerous stories in The History of Middle-earth. The King of Doriath, King of the Sindar Elves, High-king and Lord of Beleriand, he is a major character in the First Age of Middle-earth and an essential part of the ancestral backgrounding of the romance between Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings. Alone among the Elves, he married an angelic Maia, Melian.
The Lhammas, Noldorin for "account of tongues", is a work of fictional sociolinguistics, written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937, and published in the 1987 The Lost Road and Other Writings, volume five of The History of Middle-earth series.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the real-world history and notable fictional elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy universe. It covers materials created by Tolkien; the works on his unpublished manuscripts, by his son Christopher Tolkien; and films, games and other media created by other people.
J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, drew on a wide array of influences including language, Christianity, mythology, archaeology, ancient and modern literature, and personal experience. He was inspired primarily by his profession, philology; his work centred on the study of Old English literature, especially Beowulf, and he acknowledged its importance to his writings.
Aragorn is a fictional character and a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn is a Ranger of the North, first introduced with the name Strider and later revealed to be the heir of Isildur, an ancient King of Arnor and Gondor. Aragorn is a confidant of the wizard Gandalf and plays a part in the quest to destroy the One Ring and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron. As a young man, Aragorn falls in love with the immortal elf Arwen, as told in "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen". Arwen's father, Elrond Half-elven, forbids them to marry unless Aragorn becomes King of both Arnor and Gondor.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, Elves are the first fictional race to appear in Middle-earth. Unlike Men and Dwarves, Elves are immortal, though they can be killed in battle. If so, their souls go to the Halls of Mandos in Aman. After a long life in Middle-earth, Elves yearn for the Earthly Paradise of Valinor, and can sail there from the Grey Havens. They feature in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Their history is described in detail in The Silmarillion.
The poetry in The Lord of the Rings consists of the poems and songs written by J. R. R. Tolkien, interspersed with the prose of his high fantasy novel of Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings. The book contains over 60 pieces of verse of many kinds; some poems related to the book were published separately. Seven of Tolkien's songs, all but one from The Lord of the Rings, were made into a song-cycle, The Road Goes Ever On, set to music by Donald Swann. All the poems in The Lord of the Rings were set to music and published on CDs by The Tolkien Ensemble.
The naming of weapons in Middle-earth is the giving of names to swords and other powerful weapons in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He derived the naming of weapons from his knowledge of Medieval times; the practice is found in Norse mythology and in the Old English poem Beowulf. Among the many weapons named by Tolkien are Orcrist and Glamdring in The Hobbit, and Narsil / Andúril in The Lord of the Rings. Such weapons carry powerful symbolism, embodying the identity and ancestry of their owners.
England and Englishness are represented in multiple forms within J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings; it appears, more or less thinly disguised, in the form of the Shire and the lands close to it; in kindly characters such as Treebeard, Faramir, and Théoden; in its industrialised state as Isengard and Mordor; and as Anglo-Saxon England in Rohan. Lastly, and most pervasively, Englishness appears in the words and behaviour of the hobbits, both in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings.
J. R. R. Tolkien's presentation of heroism in The Lord of the Rings is based on medieval tradition, but modifies it, as there is no single hero but a combination of heroes with contrasting attributes. Aragorn is the man born to be a hero, of a line of kings; he emerges from the wilds and is uniformly bold and restrained. Frodo is an unheroic, home-loving Hobbit who has heroism thrust upon him when he learns that the ring he has inherited from his cousin Bilbo is the One Ring that would enable the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth. His servant Sam sets out to take care of his beloved master, and rises through the privations of the quest to destroy the Ring to become heroic.
The philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien set out to explore time travel and distortions in the passage of time in his fiction in a variety of ways. The passage of time in The Lord of the Rings is uneven, seeming to run at differing speeds in the realms of Men and of Elves. In this, Tolkien was following medieval tradition in which time proceeds differently in Elfland. The whole work, too, following the theory he spelt out in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", is meant to transport the reader into another time. He built a process of decline and fall in Middle-earth into the story, echoing the sense of impending destruction of Norse mythology. The Elves attempt to delay this decline as far as possible in their realms of Rivendell and Lothlórien, using their Rings of Power to slow the passage of time. Elvish time, in The Lord of the Rings as in the medieval Thomas the Rhymer and the Danish Elvehøj, presents apparent contradictions. Both the story itself and scholarly interpretations offer varying attempts to resolve these; time may be flowing faster or more slowly, or perceptions may differ.
J. R. R. Tolkien used frame stories throughout his Middle-earth writings, especially his legendarium, to make the works resemble a genuine mythology written and edited by many hands over a long period of time. He described in detail how his fictional characters wrote their books and transmitted them to others, and showed how later in-universe editors annotated the material.
J. R. R. Tolkien was attracted to medieval literature, and made use of it in his writings, both in his poetry, which contained numerous pastiches of medieval verse, and in his Middle-earth novels where he embodied a wide range of medieval concepts.
In Tolkien's legendarium, ancestry provides a guide to character. The apparently genteel Hobbits of the Baggins family turn out to be worthy protagonists of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins is seen from his family tree to be both a Baggins and an adventurous Took. Similarly, Frodo Baggins has some relatively outlandish Brandybuck blood. Among the Elves of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion, the highest are the peaceful Vanyar, whose ancestors conformed most closely to the divine will, migrating to Aman and seeing the light of the Two Trees of Valinor; the lowest are the mutable Teleri; and in between are the conflicted Noldor. Scholars have analysed the impact of ancestry on Elves such as the creative but headstrong Fëanor, who makes the Silmarils. Among Men, Aragorn, hero of The Lord of the Rings, is shown by his descent from Kings, Elves, and an immortal Maia to be of royal blood, destined to be the true King who will restore his people. Scholars have commented that in this way, Tolkien was presenting a view of character from Norse mythology, and an Anglo-Saxon view of kingship, though others have called his implied views racist.
The English author J. R. R. Tolkien has often been supposed to have spoken of wishing to create "a mythology for England". It seems he never used the actual phrase, but various commentators have found his biographer Humphrey Carpenter's phrase appropriate as a description of much of his approach in creating Middle-earth, and the legendarium behind The Silmarillion.